


a culmination of several things

by epilogues



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Coming Out, Earth C (Homestuck), Getting Together, I know it's 2019 but cringe culture is dead, Nonbinary Character, Other, SO
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-01 16:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20261413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epilogues/pseuds/epilogues
Summary: Karkat kind of wishes the cushions of the couch could swallow him whole, and he suddenly resents the carapacian’s weather channel for being silent, as it provides absolutely no distraction as he says, “Your crush. It’s John, right?”orDave comes out in a couple of ways, and Karkat needs to stop jumping to conclusions.





	a culmination of several things

**Author's Note:**

> what's up gamers i'm back with some homestuck fic in 2019 because i'm Living My Best Life! i know this is lowkey a very cliche davekat fic but hey, what is fanfic for if not tropes? :D

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering  turntechGodhead [TG] \--

CG: DAVE.   
TG: what   
CG: WHERE ARE YOU?  
TG: oh shit did i forget to tell you   
TG: i went out to lunch with rose and roxy   
TG: were having a sick strilonde hang   
TG: just me and the strilonde gang   
TG: except dirk i guess   
TG: i think he was busy today or something   
TG: anyway yeah thats where i am   
CG: OH.   
CG: WELL, YES, YOU FORGOT TO TELL ME, FUCKFACE. I THOUGHT YOU GOT KIDNAPPED BY A FUCKING MOB OF FANATIC CARAPACIANS OR SOMETHING.   
CG: I WAS ALREADY TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE BEST WAY TO FIND AND FREE YOU WITHOUT GETTING KIDNAPPED OR DEIGNING TO ASK JADE TO SNIFF YOU OUT LIKE SOME STUPID EARTH BARKBEAST. SHE WAS NEXT ON MY LIST OF PEOPLE TO MESSAGE. NOT TO MENTION HOW I WAS ABOUT TO GO TO THE STORE FOR SOME THUMBTACKS AND STRING TO MAKE A FUCKING CONSPIRACY-STYLE BOARD TO FIGURE OUT WHO TOOK YOU AND WHY.   
CG: BUT NO, THANKS FOR LETTING ME KNOW THAT YOU’RE COMPLETELY FUCKING FINE. I’LL JUST BE HERE WATCHING SHITTY CAN TOWN TV INSTEAD OF LISTENING TO THE SUPPOSEDLY “SICK” NEW BEATS YOU WERE GONNA SHOW ME TODAY.  
TG: oh hell no dont think youre getting out of the sick beats   
TG: you cant escape the sick beats   
TG: the sick beats are like the red -   
TG: actually you know what fuck that simile   
TG: look im gonna finish my lunch but ill be home soon   
TG: …   
TG: sorry to worry you   
CG: IT’S OKAY.   
CG: FUCKFACE.  


\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased pestering  turntechGodhead [TG]\--

Karkat shuts his husktop with a rather performative sigh, considering that no one’s around to hear it. He knows he should know better than getting so worked up over Dave’s whereabouts by now, Dave disappears randomly often enough for it not to be a big deal, but Karkat just can’t seem to help it. He knows, of course, that Dave is a god and that no carapacian is actually going to kidnap him or anything. He also knows that Dave would be completely capable of fighting off anyone that he might need to, and that it’s not like Dave could ever actually go missing, since everyone on Earth C knows his face.

In short, he knows there’s no reason to worry. But… he does.

Karkat knows that if he were to ask Rose, she’d probably tell him that that’s because of Alternia, and he knows that she’d probably be right, but he’s sick of hearing about his home planet. Not to mention the fact that Rose scares him just a little bit, just because talking to her makes him feel like she knows _everything_ about him, even - 

_Shut up,_ Karkat firmly orders his traitorous thinkpan. Jegus, he can’t believe he still can’t manage to fucking let his… _crush_ go. He’s not even sure how many sweeps it’s been now since that night on the meteor when he and Dave were watching movies and - 

Nope, nope, he’s shutting up, remember? 

Karkat sighs again for good measure and gets up to grab the TV remote from across the room, where Dave tossed it in a fit of excitement over some stupid human movie the previous night. Once he’s retrieved it, he plops down onto the couch, even daring to stretch his legs out over the ass-imprint created and usually held by a certain Strider.

He doesn’t like how quiet the house is when Dave is gone, it’s a little too much like being in his hive all over again, but the extra legroom is pretty sweet.

Karkat flips through the channels for nearly twenty minutes before finally settling on one of the many stations currently broadcasting Jake English’s ass. It’s not good television, and Karkat couldn’t honestly give less of a shit about Jake, but… he can pretend it’s a good distraction from a certain other ass that takes up way too much of his thinkpan-space. 

He lies there for only five minutes before he hears the front door swing open. Quickly, Karkat grabs the remote to change the channel, but Dave’s in the living room before Jake’s ass is replaced by the weather channel.

“Were you seriously watching Jake’s ass again?” Dave says, half-amused, half-incredulous.

“No,” Karkat huffs, quickly removing his legs from Dave’s side of the couch and placing them firmly on the floor in front of himself. “Uh. Anyway. How was your lunch?”

Dave’s face loses its usual stoic state for the briefest of moments, contorting into something Karkat has no idea what to make of before smoothing back into cooler than cool, ice cold, Dave Strider. “Good,” he says. He drops onto the couch, but he doesn’t make a grab for the remote like he usually does. “We, uh.. it was good to catch up with them.”

Dave’s facing towards the TV, but it doesn’t look like he’s actually watching anything. Fuck, Karkat hates his sunglasses. 

“Do you want to watch something other than the weather?” Karkat asks. He can’t help but be slightly concerned - Dave is almost never this quiet, never this attached to his perfect poker face at home. “I just got the DVD of a new troll movie about -”

“Sounds good,” Dave says. He leans back against the couch like he’s settling in for the movie, but Karkat can still clearly see how tense every muscle in Dave’s body is.

“Are you okay, Strider?” Karkat asks, hoping his concern doesn’t bleed into his voice too much. 

Dave lifts one shoulder in a barely perceptible movement. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

Karkat scowls. “Because you’ve been acting weird ever since you got back, asshole.”

“Look, I’m just - “ Dave sits up slightly before flopping back into the couch and folding his arms across his chest. “It’s nothing, dude, okay?” 

“No, it’s obviously not, what the fuck were you talking about at that lunch?” Karkat finally demands, turning to face Dave and crossing his arms as well. “Was Rose getting in your head with her fucking therapist shit again? Because you don’t have to listen to her, you know. Or did Roxy finally get sick of all your weird calling-them-hot shit?”

“No, it wasn’t… I went to talk to them about some personal shit, alright? It’s not a big deal. In fact, it’s the smallest of deals. It’s like a miniature molehill created by a miniature mole for its miniature mole science fair, except it’s like a miniature volcano molehill with baking soda and shit ‘cause it’s for a science fair. Except it’s a shitty volcano, because it doesn’t have any substance to it and it’s not going to actually erupt ever, because there’s nothing inside of it, like, the mole’s tiny little mole mom got it fake baking soda from the store ‘cause she’s cheap, and it’s really just a tiny, tiny little hill that doesn’t matter at all. That’s what all of this is. Got it?”

Karkat sighs, loud and a little overdramatic. “Dave.”

“No, scratch that, it’s like, it’s like an ant -”

_”Dave._ This kind of sounds like it’s a big deal.”

“No, it’s not, dude,” Dave retorts. His hands, which were just frantically waving around, fall to his sides. He suddenly looks exhausted.

Karkat knows the question he’s about to ask probably indicates a fucking wiggler’s level of intelligence, but he’s never really had the best filter and it comes out anyway. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Dave’s answering look manages to be scathing even with his glasses on. Karkat resists the sudden - but certainly not unfamiliar - urge to start shoosh-papping him and presses forward with a technique he may or may not have learned from Rose. “Would it _help_ to talk about it?”

Dave reangles his body so that he’s not facing Karkat anymore and drops his face into his hands, sliding his hands under his shades so he doesn’t smudge them. Karkat mentally swears at the way his bloodpusher lights up at the frankly adorable sight. 

“Yeah,” Dave finally mumbles. He lifts his face up and lets his shades fall back onto the bridge of his nose before continuing. “I’m sorry I’m being so shitty about all of this, I just … I wasn’t expecting to actually talk about any of this with Rose and Roxy today even though that’s why I planned the lunch in the first place, ‘cause I needed advice, y’know, and then they both agreed that I should probably talk to you about it sometime soon and I wasn’t going to at first, because…”

Whatever else Dave is saying momentarily fades out as Karkat’s subconscious finally lets the word he’s been trying not to think about in. What if this whole thing is about Dave having a _crush_? It would make sense if he went to Rose about it, then, probably, because she does give pretty good advice. 

Roxy’s presence doesn’t make much sense in that equation, though, unless - unless there were two factors determining the lunch group: being a Strilonde and being what the humans call queer. Unless Dave’s (_Hypothetical,_ Karkat reminds himself sternly) crush was directed at a male. And all of that combined with the fact that Rose and Roxy both said that Dave should tell him about this situation…

Karkat’s shit-idiot-no-filter thinkpan blurts, “It’s John, isn’t it?”

Dave stops mid-rant. His eyebrows draw together and he sounds confused as a wriggler being taught the hemospectrum when he says, “What?”

Karkat kind of wishes the cushions of the couch could swallow him whole, and he suddenly resents the carapacian’s weather channel for being silent, as it provides him with absolutely no hope for a background distraction as he says, “Your crush. It’s John, right?”

Dave is silent for a moment, his face completely unreadable, and then there’s a hint of wry amusement in his voice when he says, “You didn’t listen to half of what I just said, did you?”

“Uh,” Karkat says eloquently. 

Dave half-laughs, half-sighs as he says, “Glad I didn’t say anything important then. Look, dude, I didn’t really go to talk to them about a crush, and I _definitely_ don’t have a crush on John, okay? Gross.” Dave shudders slightly before drawing his legs up close to his chest and dropping his chin onto his knees. It’s a position Karkat’s almost never seen him in before, and it’s simultaneously cute and almost-scarily vulnerable. “I was talking to them about some other stuff that’s been going on, since I figured they were the best ones to talk to it about.”

Karkat tries to soften his posture as well to mimic Dave. It’s not often that Dave chills out and talks like this, and while his head is still spinning with the way that Dave didn’t explicitly deny having a crush, he wants to be a good listener. He uncrosses his arms and brings his legs up to sit what Dave informed humans call “criss-cross fruit paste” or something like that as he waits for Dave to continue. 

“I know troll culture is different about this sort of thing, so this probably isn’t going to seem like a big deal to you,” Dave says after a long moment. “But for humans, and for me and Bro especially, I think, it’s like… a lot. Or at least it used to be, it probably won’t be here, since we left most of the shitty stuff from both of our planets behind. Like when you leave a jacket behind when you go on vacation, and you don’t really realize it’s gone because you’re not cold the whole time, but then you see someone else with a jacket and you kind of wish you had brought yours even though it’s hot and you’re definitely better off without it? Especially because now you can bring home some more random shit that you stole from the hotel ‘cause you have that empty space in your suitcase, and - yeah, it’s like that, I guess.”

Karkat mentally congratulates himself on staying focused for that entire metaphor. He keeps his eyes trained on Dave and doesn’t let himself think about the abundance of pale feelings he has springing up alongside the usual flushed ones right now. 

“But, um. Anyway, I don’t know why I’m dancing around this since you’re not gonna care, but I think I’m… not a guy, exactly? LIke I don’t know what I am, I don’t think I’m a girl, really, but half the time I think I might be, if that makes sense? I don’t know, shit’s confusing, but yeah. There’s that.”

Dave’s arms tense up where they’re wrapped around his legs, and he seems suddenly very interested in the floor. 

“Oh, yeah, of course that’s not a big deal to me, dude,” Karkat says once he’s determined that Dave is actually done speaking. “Trolls barely do gender, so whatever the fuck you want do or be called couldn’t matter less to me.”

It’s true, of course, but he can’t deny the way his shoulders slump the slightest bit. Jegus fuck, why did he let himself get his hopes up about what Dave was going to confess? 

On the bright side, though, Dave seems to relax a bit. He releases his legs and settles back into something closer to his usual couch stance. “He/him pronouns are still fine, by the way,” he adds. 

“Cool,” Karkat says, and then, like a fucking idiot, he gives Dave a thumbs-up. What the fuck is he even _doing_? Has he been spending too much time around John or something? He knows he should probably just abscond to his block and let himself mope around like an asshole for a while, but for some reason, his legs feel glued to the couch. 

Dave snorts. “What the fuck was that?”

“A thumbs-up, asshole,” Karkat snaps, automatically falling back into one of his defensive retorts. “Because I’m being a fucking supportive friend to your weird human gender shit.”

“Just so you know, I’m rolling my eyes good-naturedly,” Dave says, tapping the edge of his shades. “Do you, uh, want to watch that new troll flick now that I’m done sharing my feelings and shit?”

“Yeah, sure,” Karkat says, grateful for the excuse to leave the room for a moment. He hops up from the couch and heads down the hall to his block to grab the disc. As he walks, he tries to force himself to take deep breaths and just _chill out_. What the fuck was he expecting, some sort of confession of undying love? For Dave to admit that he wants Karkat in multiple quadrants, just like Karkat wants him thanks to some fucking twist of fate? Ugh. 

Karkat can’t really help the way he stomps back into the living room once he’s retrieved the movie, or the way he’s briefly concerned about the structural integrity of the DVD player after he stabs the power button and the whole system shudders.

“Dude, you okay?” Dave asks. “If I… shit, I’m sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable now.”

He’s clearly trying to maintain his poker face, but Karkat knows him well enough at this point to notice the way he looks like he’s trying to shrink back into himself. “I’m fine,” Karkat says. “I really, really don’t care about your gender shit, okay? Like, I care, because you’re my, um, best friend, but it doesn’t affect me. So I’m fucking fine.”

He forces himself to press the buttons on the remote gently and to not have a scowl on his face as he sits down and starts the movie. He thinks it actually works, mostly because Dave seems like he’s lost in thought and therefore not paying attention to Karkat. 

On the screen, the opening credits fade. Karkat is getting his bloodpusher-rate back down to something a little more normal, and it seems like he’s going to be able to shove all thoughts of his crush back down - until Dave clears his throat. 

“Karkat?” he says.

Karkat internally groans. Why can’t he just focus on the movie for two seconds? Troll Ben Stiller just came on screen. “What?”

“I, um. Well, you know Rose came to lunch too even though she’s, like, all good with gender? Like Rose and her gender are best friends and they’ve grown up together and know everything about each other. And they even went to middle school together, and there were one or two days where her gender decided it wanted to eat with the cool kids, and Rose didn’t, so maybe they had a bit of a disagreement but ultimately reconciled and made their own group of cool kids, and now they’re better friends for having argued, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Karkat says slowly. He reaches for the remote and pauses the movie, since it seems like this might take a moment. Troll Ben Stiller freezes in the middle of what was looking to be an excellent opening monologue. 

“So I didn’t invite Rose to talk about gender shit,” Dave continues. “We, uh, kinda talked about some other stuff too.”

Karkat nods for Dave to keep going and does _not_ let his hopes start to climb a tiny echeladder of expectations in his chest. 

“Again, I know this isn’t something trolls - it’s different when - do you remember that time on the meteor when we helped the Mayor build the high school?” Dave seems frustrated by the time he finally settles on a sentence. “Actually, fuck, that doesn’t matter. Can I just rap about this? Rose said I shouldn’t rap about this, but I kind of feel like I’m not going to be able to say it unless I rap about it.” 

“I’d really rather you didn’t rap,” Karkat says carefully. He remembers the time that they built Faygo High, of course, he does, because his and Dave’s hands kept brushing as they stacked the cans, and there had been a _moment_ once the building was done where he and Dave had locked eyes and the air felt charged with an inevitable connection - and then the school had collapsed. The moment was gone, and they’d never spoken about it since. Karkat suddenly feels like he’s standing on the edge of a precipice. “Just say it, Dave.” 

Dave sighs and runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up in the front in a way that’s definitely not endearing. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, probably another goddamn essay if the breath he takes is any indication, but no sound comes out. Instead, he just leans across the couch, quickly at first, but then slowing as he gets closer and closer to Karkat. 

Karkat’s hopes sky-rocket up to a stupidly high rung called, like, Efficacious Asstroll or something, and he can’t help himself from leaning in too, closer and closer until he and Dave are a breath apart and all he can see is the reflection of his own wide eyes in Dave’s glasses. 

“Uh-” he starts, unsure of what he’s going to say but needing to break the silence _somehow_ \- and then Dave kisses him. 

It only lasts a moment, but it’s undeniably the best moment of Karkat’s life - to be topped only the moments following directly after as Dave whispers, “I love you,” and leans in once more.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! feedback of all kinds is always super appreciated! 
> 
> also, if you have any hs fic requests - i'm always looking for prompts so feel free to send those to @teenagehandz on tumblr + i'll write something for them! :D


End file.
